“I have some suspicions,” David said

Martha sank to the floor, clutching the phone. “What?”

“An idea or two that I’m fairly certain warrant a follow-up.”

Martha held the phone tighter. “You’ve talked them over with the sheriff?”

“No, I haven’t.” She noticed the pastor’s hesitation. “That’s the thing,” he continued, sounding almost unsure of himself—which wasn’t something she’d ever noticed in him before. “These suspicions. I’d rather not tell Greg about them.”

“Okay.”

“And I hope you’ll agree not to mention this conversation to anyone yet.”

Right now she’d agree to just about anything to get some answers. To catch the bastard who’d hurt her daughter. “I’ll agree on one condition—that you let me help.”

“I can’t do that.”

She stared at the floor. “Why not?”

“I…”

A preacher with secrets. At the moment she didn’t care. “That’s my deal, Pastor,” she said with finality.

Dear Reader,

We’re back in Shelter Valley. It’s so great to return to the town and the people I’ve grown to love. And it’s even better to have you here with us.

If this is your first time in Shelter Valley, welcome! You’re going to feel right at home.

Finally we get to walk hand in hand with Martha Moore. So many of you have written to say how much you care about her and that you’d like to spend more time with her. I, too, needed to hear what she’s got to say. I hope you’ll agree that it was worth the wait.

And we meet David Marks, a man with a mission and a past, with strong teachings and dark secrets. And I think you’ll find he’s a man you want to know.

What happens in Shelter Valley this time shocked even me. It’s not the story I originally set out to tell. I’m asking with all sincerity that, even if you’re as shocked as I was, you won’t give up on this story. I might take you places that make you uncomfortable, but I promise to bring you back, satisfied and with a sense of happiness.

Preliminary reviews of Nothing Sacred have been very positive. I’m eager to hear what you think. You can reach me by mail at P.O. Box 15065, Scottsdale, AZ 86226 or by e-mail at ttquinn@tarataylorquinn.com. And I hope you’ll visit my Web site—www.tarataylorquinn.com.

Wishing you perfect moments…

Tara Taylor Quinn

Nothing Sacred
Tara Taylor Quinn

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To the “cool girls.”

(Mary Strand, Lynn Kerstan, Carol Prescott and Pat Potter)

Your friendship and support helped more than you know…

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER ONE

“LOVE IS A REMARKABLE thing….” The man’s voice droned on and Martha Moore pulled out her notepad and pen.

Eggs.

Milk.

Cereal—for Tim.

Granola—for her and the girls.

Lunch meat.

Chips. Tim had finished up the last of them the night before while watching reruns of Upstairs, Downstairs on Masterpiece Theater.

It was a show she and his father had watched when it originally aired. They’d had sex for the first time after a particularly moving episode.

Damn Todd Moore.

“When you’re loving others, you don’t have to worry about what anyone else is thinking or doing.”

Glancing up from her list, Martha almost snorted at the new preacher.

“Because what you give will be reflected back.”

Yeah, right. Get a life. She gazed skyward—past the good-looking man standing to the left of the pulpit—rather than in front of it like his predecessor. No flashing lights or threatening noises came from above at her lack of reverence.

Just checking.

“What are you doing?” Shelley, her sixteen-year-old daughter, whispered irritably. Shelley had recently developed an attitude that Martha found challenging, to put it mildly. “Someone might see you.”

Biting back the words she wanted to say, reminding her daughter with a look that she was a fully grown adult with the right to stare up at the ceiling if she wanted to, Martha returned to her list.

Bread. She always forgot the bread. Probably because ever since her psychology-professor husband had left her for a twenty-something-year-old student she’d been a bit obsessive about her forty-one-year-old thighs.

“When you look at everything and everyone in your life through eyes of love rather than fear, you disassociate yourself from the possibility of pain, and live, instead, with the constant assurance of peace.”

Bottled water. Martha glanced again. Was this guy for real? Walking around up there in slacks and a dress shirt with a tie that was probably real Italian silk and had more colors than the checkered and striped dinnerware she’d drooled over in the Crate and Barrel catalogue that had come earlier in the week. There’d never been a preacher in Shelter Valley Community Church, or in the other churches in town, who didn’t wear the long flowing robe and sash associated with the calling, and who didn’t hide behind a pulpit when he preached.

Constant peace? Who was he kidding? Constant aches and pains, more like it.

But then, from what she’d heard, the man was thirty-eight years old and had never been married. He had no family. What did he know about loving?

Hamburger.

Dryer sheets.

Boneless chicken breasts.

Toilet paper.

“The soft kind,” Tim leaned over to whisper. He was on her other side, next to his oldest sister, Ellen. Rebecca, Martha’s fifteen-year-old daughter, was on the other side of Shelley.

“Pay attention!”

With exaggerated force, Martha pointed to the preacher. After all, her kids were the only reason she was even there.

Once, shortly after Todd had left and before she’d landed her job as production assistant at Montford University’s television station, she’d let tight finances convince her to buy bargain toilet paper. That had been the first time her son had expressed the anger that had been building since his father’s defection.

“You aren’t paying attention,” Tim whispered, more loudly than Martha would have liked. Raising this boy was certainly different from raising the three girls who’d come before him.

“She doesn’t have to, stupid, she’s the boss.” Shelley leaned across Martha to hiss at her brother. Much to Martha’s distress, Shelley’s youngest sibling was most often the target of the girl’s disdain.

“Nuh-uh,” Tim said in a low voice. “God is.”

With a roll of her eyes, accompanied by a dramatic flounce for all the congregation to see, Shelley settled back against the pew.

Martha looked straight ahead, pretending that all was well in Mooreville. And saw that the members of the entire congregation weren’t the only witnesses to their little interchange.

David Cole Marks, the new preacher at Shelter Valley Community Church, had seen the whole thing.

She held his gaze until she realized she was behaving as belligerently as Shelley in one of her more “charming” moments. Then Martha returned her attention to the paper in her lap.

Or attempted to.

The preacher’s eyes seemed to bore into her mind, interrupting her ability to focus on the list in front of her. There’d been nothing disciplinary in those eyes, nothing condescending. No rebuke.

Only kind understanding. And a question. As though he wanted to help.

Yeah, right. She’d seen that same compassionate regard from this man’s predecessor—and knew firsthand that what a person showed on the surface was no indication of what might lie beneath.

Forget the grocery list. Next time she’d bring a book.

“IT’S ALWAYS A BIT of a challenge coming into a new church,” Pastor David Marks said aloud as he drove his hunter-green, two-door Ford Explorer away from his house behind Shelter Valley Community Church. With four bedrooms, the place was far too large.

He’d stopped home only long enough for a frozen burrito after church. He’d had a couple of invitations to dinner, but hadn’t wanted to pass up the opportunity—until now, nonexistent—to visit with Martha Moore and her family. Her meeting his gaze during services this morning had been a first. “Trust and confidence has to be earned,” he continued.

But this time is harder.

David nodded, right at home with the small voice inside him. He used to question his sanity over that voice, making himself crazy with a need to discern its source. His own mind? Intuition? An angel? There was no way to ever prove it one way or another, so he’d finally settled on an angel. He’d granted himself his own personal guardian angel.

“Yes,” he answered, “this time is harder.”

Why?

“Because this time I’m paying for the sins of another man.”

He felt the truth of those words like a punch to the solar plexus. He’d known, of course, but never consciously acknowledged it. Never gave words to the thought.

Yes.

He turned. And turned again, slowing when he drew close to his destination. “Something with which I am intimately familiar.”

Yes.

Peace settled just beneath his ribs as the next thought occurred to him. “And that makes me the right man for this job.”

Yes.

With this acknowledgment, the uphill struggle of the past six months—visiting home after home, seeking out people in their own surroundings, trying to break through the defensive walls that prevented him from doing his job as effectively as possible—ceased being such a drain on his emotional energy. “Thank you, Angel.” And you can kick me for taking six months to ask, he added as a silent afterthought.

You’re welcome. He was sure the angel was laughing.

David was laughing at himself, too, as he pulled into the driveway of his most standoffish—and yet, he suspected, one of his neediest—parishioners that Sunday afternoon in January.

He’d been trying to pin Martha Moore down to a visit since he’d arrived in Shelter Valley the previous summer. Today, he’d finally been given a very reluctant invitation—and only because he’d finally wised up and gone through her son, Tim. That was one young man who seemed open to new experiences, willing to give a new relationship a chance.

David was looking forward to getting to know Tim better.

He glanced at the well-worn, leather-bound Bible beside him, decided to leave it there, and climbed out of his car. Later. He’d get to the good book later.

DAVID WISHED HE’D BROUGHT the book. Not because he would’ve opened it. Or even considered reading from it. Certainly the atmosphere, even with the smell of chocolate chip cookies in the air, was not conducive to a sharing of his favorite passages.

No, facing the pleasant and completely empty smile of Martha Moore across the coffee table in her living room, David wished he had the book for purely selfish reasons. He wanted something to do with his hands.

No.

Okay, he wanted to hide behind the safety and security it represented.

Yes.

Yes. Well, angel, thanks a lot for that one. He listened while Martha told him how much she’d enjoyed his sermon that morning. He was almost positive she hadn’t heard a word of it. She’d been writing—and David would bet she hadn’t been taking notes on anything he’d had to say.

“So tell me, Pastor Marks, why did you join the ministry?”

“Mom!” Ellen Moore, Martha’s blond and beautiful eldest daughter, reprimanded with some firmness from the armchair facing her mother.

“Mom’s just a little prejudiced,” fifteen-year-old Rebecca explained wisely. Her leggy and very skinny body was sprawled next to her mother on the couch—across from the love seat where David sat.

“Yeah, she was the one who walked in on Edwards and a woman.” Tim piped up from the floor. With his arms over his head, his T-shirt was raised, giving David—and everyone else in the room—a look at the top three-quarters of the dark blue boxers he wore under the too-large khaki pants, which rested dangerously low. “Sly told me her bra was undone and everything.”

Sylvester Young was one of Shelter Valley’s most rambunctious but harmless thirteen-year-olds. From what David had seen, he was in the constant company of Tim Moore.

“Shut up, twerp.” Shelley reached forward from her seat on the couch to nudge her brother with her toe.

“Stop it,” Tim said, slapping at her foot. “Sly heard his mother talking to Pastor Edwards’s wife and that’s what she said.”

“What she said isn’t the point,” Martha insisted, at the same time leaning over Rebecca to place a warning hand on Shelley’s knee. “It simply isn’t your business to repeat something like that.”

Knocking her mother’s hand off her knee, Shelley turned her back on Tim. And looked right into David’s eyes.

The belligerence—and was that fear?—he saw there sent a jolt to his heart. He’d thought his job was merely to be friendly, offer a helping hand to a woman single-handedly doing the job of two people. He hadn’t realized there were problems other than a family stretched too thin. His work was going to require more of him than he’d expected.

Yes.

“I don’t mind your mother’s question, Ellen,” David said, including the entire Moore clan in his smile. “I became a minister so I could spend my life immersed in big-picture endeavors.”

“I don’t get it,” Rebecca said, one of her long, jean-clad legs swinging back and forth.

“Things that affect lifetimes instead of just minutes.”

His words were directed at Rebecca, but he spoke to her mother. He had a feeling big-picture issues were something Martha Moore would understand—if she let herself think about them.

“Why?” Martha was looking at him.

He held that gaze. “So I can make lives better, bring people hope and help them find a touch of the elusive joy most of us crave.”

No.

David wasn’t sure who’d delivered the message, his private angel or his own disgusted ego. Or maybe it had been her.

She turned to the window, but not before David saw the small glimmer of disappointment in Martha Moore’s remarkable brown eyes. This woman might want him to think she was hardened beyond hope.

But she wasn’t. Not quite yet.

Still, he couldn’t tell her the whole truth—which was what she’d seemed to need.

A father to many because he would never, ever father children of his own, a mentor and caregiver to all as he would never provide for a wife and family, David Cole Marks had a secret to keep.

Elbows on his knees, he clasped his hands between them. “You ever come up against things in life that just don’t make sense?” he asked.

“I do.” Tim piped up again from the floor, the electronic game he’d been engrossed in now ignored. “Algebra. It’s stupid. Why waste time with as and bs and stuff when you’re just gonna have to stick numbers in there, anyway?”

“You are so lame,” Shelley whispered, with a surreptitious glance at her mother.

“Of course I have.” Martha answered as though her children hadn’t spoken. “Most of the things that happen don’t make sense.”

“Exactly.” David nodded, his eyes on her bent head as he willed her to look up at him. To engage in what might be an actual conversation. “So instead of making myself crazy trying to find sense in senseless things, I decided to devote my energies to the pursuit of universal truths. I really believe that’s the only source of lasting peace and happiness.”

If he was ever going to be able to influence this very jaded woman, he’d have to speak with an honest and open heart. His sincerity, his conviction, would convey the power of his message.

Her head rose, her eyes slowly meeting his. He could read intelligence in their striking brown depths—and, after that initial second, the skepticism with which she considered his words.

“You’re paid to say stuff like that.”

And that was why David hated being a minister. People automatically assumed that his message was the stereotypical religious platitudes. But there was nothing stereotypical about what he had to teach.

About what he believed.

“I don’t know, Mom,” Ellen said, wrinkling her forehead under the cropped and sprayed blond bangs. “Sure doesn’t sound like the kind of thing Pastor Edwards would say.”

A compliment, indeed. David smiled at the slim teenager.

Tim, once again engrossed in his handheld electronic game, was making noises to emulate the crashes and high-speed chases he was attempting to control.

“Pastor Marks.” Martha frowned at her son but said nothing to him. “Please tell my daughter that you get paid to say these things.”

Okay, he had his work cut out there. “I get paid to preach,” he said. “I don’t get paid to believe.”

Even Shelley was listening to the exchange.

Martha sat back, arms crossed over her chest, and such a clear I-told-you-so expression on her face that he couldn’t bite back his next words, in spite of his better judgment.

“And I do believe.”

“Point to the pastor,” Shelley said under her breath.

Martha sat forward. “So what about before you joined the ministry?” she asked.

He’d left that part of his life behind. Forgiven himself. Forgotten.

“I graduated from high school,” he said, repeating the story by rote. “I went to college, got an undergraduate degree in social work, took a job with a private corporation, trying to figure out what I wanted to do. A friend of mine jokingly suggested one night that if I was so filled with lofty ideas, I should have studied theology. His words struck a chord that wouldn’t be silent.”

“Cool,” Tim said. “So you became a minister then?”

David grinned at the boy. “After three years of intense study, yes.”

Martha stood. “Yes, well, it’s been nice—”

The phone on the end table beside Rebecca rang. The skinny young teen with the pitch-black hair in a ponytail handed the mobile receiver up to her mother.

With scarce intimate knowledge of this family, there was no way for David to guess who was on the other end of the line, receiving Martha’s pleasantly delivered message that her children were busy and couldn’t come to the phone. But if he were a betting man, he’d bet last week’s entire paycheck that the caller was not in her favor, despite her friendly tone. Before the phone had rung, Martha had been concluding David’s visit.

The sudden whiteness of her cheeks only heightened his curiosity.

“Oh,” she said, turning her back on the curious eyes of her children. Seconds later, she admitted, “Yes, they’re here, but—”

“It’s Dad,” Tim said quietly, head lowered as he glanced up at his three sisters.

“I know—” Martha began again. She was obviously cut off a second time by the persistent caller.

Ellen nodded. Rebecca draped her leg over the end of the couch and swung it back and forth. Motionless, Shelley sat there with no expression whatsoever. All three girls were watching their mother.

“I’m not—”

None of the kids seemed particularly worried—other than perhaps Ellen. As she looked at her mother, her eyes filled with a warm compassion. David was beginning to associate that quality with Martha’s eldest. None of the children seemed particularly eager to connect with the voice at the other end of the line, either.

Most interesting to David was the complete change that had come over the woman who’d topped the list months ago as his hardest sell in his new job. She was assertive, at least on the surface, but there was a vulnerability, a lack of self-confidence he didn’t recognize at all.

He’d felt drawn—no, guided—to her from the beginning. Compelled by the sense that she needed help she would never ask for. Her current reaction strengthened the inner resolve that had kept him trying, in spite of no success, for months.

“Fine. You’re right.” David was surprised to hear the words. And even more startled when Martha turned and, without another word, passed the phone to Ellen.

“It was good of you to come by.” She spoke to David immediately, loudly enough to camouflage at least part of her daughter’s telephone conversation.

He stood, taking the hand she offered. But he wasn’t ready to be dismissed so easily.

Or to leave when there might be a crisis unfolding. “You’ve got your hands full here,” he said. “I’ve got two very able ones—and some free time.”

Her expression distracted, Martha shook her head. Pulled back her hand. “I’ve been managing this brood just fine for more than four years, Pastor Marks. But thanks.”

Behind her, Ellen, lips pinched, gave the phone to Shelley, whose dark spiked hair was a sharp contrast to her timidly offered hello.

“I don’t mean to imply that you aren’t doing a terrific job,” David said, returning his gaze to the woman trying to get rid of him. He refrained from reminding her that he’d asked them all to call him David. “Just that I’m here and I’ve found that almost everyone can benefit from a lightening of the load sometimes. I’m quite proficient at mowing grass, fixing cars or even seeing that there’s dinner on the table if you ever have to be too many places at once. And I can help out on very short notice.”

Head turned slightly to the side, Martha was obviously attempting to hear both conversations at once—the one in which she was engaged and the one going on behind her. Shelley’s voice had grown even softer than Ellen’s. Mostly she appeared to be listening without saying much at all.

“Not usual duties for a preacher,” Martha remarked, although rather than sounding impressed by his efforts she seemed annoyed.

Or maybe it was just her daughter’s conversation that was having that effect on her.

“I’m also fairly adept at just listening without offering advice, if that’s what’s needed.”

Behind her, Rebecca flopped over to the middle couch seat to take the phone from her sister. “Hi, Daddy, how are you?”

The start Martha gave was almost indiscernible.

So it was her ex-husband, just as Tim had predicted.

“I have lots of friends,” Martha told him now. “But if there’s ever a time when I can’t reach one of them when I need help, I’ll be sure to keep your offer in mind.”

She was wearing a smile that looked painfully forced.

Rebecca had grown silent behind her. The ponytail that was almost constantly bobbing was oddly still now.

“I’d love to see Tim play ball sometime,” David said, before the boy’s mother could order him out of her house—which, he suspected, was coming next. He didn’t want to leave while the family was so obviously upset. There must be something he could do. Some counsel he could offer. “I used to be a little leaguer myself.”

Pushing buttons on his video device and biting his lower lip, the boy didn’t seem to hear.

“Half the town comes to see the games,” Martha said. “There are usually teams playing every night of the week during the season. There’s only one lighted field in town so you can’t miss it, and the games always start at seven.” She barely took a breath. David had the impression that she was trying to prevent a moment’s silence during which he’d be able to hear Rebecca’s conversation with her father.

Not that she was having much of one. Like her two older sisters, the girl had grown very quiet. But while Ellen and Shelley were staring at their laps, Rebecca kept glancing nervously at the back of her mother’s head.

“I haven’t seen you at Bible study once since I’ve been here,” he said then, realizing the inanity of the comment as he spoke the words. He was really grasping.

And more determined than ever not to leave until he knew that this single-parent family was going to be okay.

“I quit going almost a year ago.”

About the time she’d found her former pastor in the arms of a married parishioner?

David knew why Martha Moore was one of his hardest souls to reach. She and her boss, Keith Nielson, were the two who’d walked into Pastor Edwards’s office and seen his hands fondling the naked breasts of the mother of teenage sons. The wife of a prominent Shelter Valley businessman.

Martha and Keith had taken the pastor at face value when he’d said it would never happen again. When he’d told them he’d confess to his wife, begged them to let him salvage a marriage that he valued.

They were the two hardest hit when Edwards was discovered with the same woman a second time—in an even more compromising situation—and forced out of a job he’d held for decades.

Edwards had lied to her. To the whole town.

And, in his own way, David Cole Marks was guilty of the same thing.

CHAPTER TWO

THE DISTURBING near silence that had permeated Martha’s living room as her children, one by one, heard what their father had called to tell them grew even more intense when Timothy took his turn on the phone.

Martha had known that would happen.

She desperately wanted the do-gooding man who was currently filling the job of preacher to have left her home before then.

She needed to be alone with her children, to be able to tend to the shock and hurt on her daughters’ faces.

But Preacher Marks was still standing in the room, mentioning something about a new choral production for the next Christmas season, when Tim took the phone. Her son didn’t say much more than his sisters had while his father was on the line.

There were some things that didn’t change, and Tim’s fearful respect for his father’s authority was one of them.

It lasted, as Martha had known it would, right up until Tim slammed down the phone.

“That’s disgusting!”

She would’ve liked to remind him to take better care of their things.

“Tim.” Martha turned to him, to all four of them, needing to help them with something that couldn’t be helped, but determined to try, anyway.

And needing to be alone with them. And with herself.

“It’s gross!” Tim blurted at her, his brown eyes glaring. The girls were all staring up at her, as though expecting her to make some incisive comment that would put everything into place.

She wished she could have accommodated them.

Everyone except her seemed to have forgotten the preacher standing behind her.

“Calm down for a second,” she said evenly, scrambling for a way to hold life together long enough to get rid of Marks. This was Moore business. Shelter Valley business. Not Marks business. “Why don’t you go start the car, Ellen, and we’ll go into town for some ice cream.”

It had worked when they were little.

And they’d all been glad when she’d brought home sundaes the week before.

“He’s a big fat jerk,” Tim said, standing there with his arms folded across a chest that was just beginning to take on masculine form. His glance, traveling among his sisters, landed on Ellen. “Having a baby at his age, with a girl who’s practically your age, is just plain sick!”

The words cut Martha to the quick.

Her daughters, with moist eyes and unsmiling mouths, looked lost. Broken.

Four years ago, Todd had left them high and dry—except for the checks he sent—for a girl just a couple of years older than Ellen. One of his students. At Martha’s request, he’d gone with her to see Pastor Edwards. They hadn’t even had one full visit before Todd had stated that he had no interest in patching things up with his wife. He wanted out.

Away from her.

From their kids.

Looking up, Martha caught the empathy aimed at her from the eyes of the stranger who’d come, grudgingly invited, into their midst.

For one brief second, she wanted to die.

“YOU’LL HAVE TO FORGIVE my mom,” Ellen Moore said, walking the preacher out to his car shortly after Tim’s outburst on Sunday afternoon. “She’s not usually so…unfriendly.”

Ellen couldn’t bring herself to call her mother rude. She loved her too much. And she understood.

As much as a twenty-year-old kid could understand a mother’s heartache.

“Don’t worry about it,” David Marks said. “I can see she’s an impressive woman. She’s carrying around a ton of emotional responsibility and doesn’t seem to be dropping any of it.”

The look in his eyes gave Ellen an odd sensation. One she barely recognized. It made her feel safe. Protected.

She hadn’t felt that way since her father left.

“It’s just that Mom and Dad went to Pastor Edwards for counseling. He was Mom’s last hope after she found out Dad was having an affair with one of his students.”

Ellen glanced quickly back at the house as she said the words, knowing that her mother couldn’t hear, but feeling guilty anyway. As though she were betraying her somehow.

“And then she was the one who found Pastor Edwards doing the very same thing Dad had done. She took it really hard.”

Ellen wanted the new pastor to understand. To not hate her mother. Or judge her. There wasn’t a woman in Shelter Valley who was a better person than Ellen’s mother. There wasn’t another woman more deserving of the help Pastor Marks was offering them.

And Ellen knew they needed it. Even if her mother was too hurt to figure that out.

“It’s okay,” David Marks said again, smiling at her. Ellen smiled back, kind of surprised that she could after what they’d just heard. “If you’re worried I’m going to give up on her, you needn’t be. I don’t give up. I just get more determined.”

“Okay.” Ellen nodded.

“And, Ellen,” he said in a low voice. “I meant everything I told you in there. What your father did has nothing to do with you or the other kids. Or your mother. It’s not reflection on any of you. It’s the result of his own selfishness or insecurity, not some inadequacy on your part. Okay?”

The permanent knot that had taken up residence in Ellen’s stomach unwound a little further. She felt like an idiot but couldn’t stop grinning at him as she stood there, watching him open his car door.

“Anyway,” she said as he hesitated with one leg inside the car, raising his brows as he watched her, “I know you were only trying to help us. And you did. Help me, I mean. I never know what to do with all the bad feelings about my dad, and the stuff you said gave me some things to think about. The idea that it’s about him and not about me—I like that. Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” the pastor said, giving her another smile. “I’m here anytime any of you need me. Just call. Okay?”

Embarrassed, and happy, too, she nodded. And then turned and ran back to the house.

Life had just gotten a little easier.

SHELLEY HURRIED UP the hill, hoping Drake would still be there. She’d had a hard time getting away from home that afternoon with Mom upset and all, but every time she thought about Dad’s phone call, she knew she’d do whatever it took to see Drake. Her mom thought she was at her friend Monica’s house. Shelley still hated the lies, couldn’t get used to telling them to her mother, but today she needed Drake more than ever.

And he didn’t like it when she made him wait, as if she was more important than he was. He had a thing about Shelter Valley girls thinking they were better than him and his friends, who mostly lived in a housing project outside Phoenix.

What if Whitney had been on the hill that afternoon? Everyone knew she wanted Drake. And he’d been staring at Whitney pretty intently on Friday night. Her stomach tensed with fear, Shelley remembered turning around from paying Drake’s friend, to see that look in Drake’s eyes as he stared at Whit. Whitney had been more out of it than normal, standing there in forty-degree weather with her shirt off, dancing like she was the hottest girl in town, even though Whitney was one of the least popular girls in school.

Of course, Shelley reminded herself as she ran out of breath three-quarters of the way up the hill, he’d looked at her even more intently when she’d taken off her sweater and unbuttoned her own shirt….

Eyes narrowed as she peered through the five o’clock Arizona dusk, she tried to see if Drake was at the top of the little hill nestled between two bigger hills in the desert outside Shelter Valley. Still too far away to hear voices, she could see some shadows. But she wasn’t sure one of them was her new boyfriend.

Oh, God.

She needed him so badly. Needed to feel his arms around her. Needed to know that she was loved.

“Please, God,” she whispered as she tried not to let her lack of breath slow her pace. “Let him be there. Especially tonight, let him be there. Without Whitney or anyone else. Let him be there waiting for me.”

She’d been hesitant to join his friends in their kind of fun, but this afternoon the preacher had made it all clear. “Things happen for a reason,” he’d said as he was leaving. “It’s up to you to see the signs and know how those things can help you.” He’d all but told her she’d been meant to meet this boy who’d never even stepped foot in Shelter Valley before this year. He and his friends could help her.

Tonight, more than ever, she just needed a little time to forget.

SINCE THE DAY SHE’D BEEN hired as program director for MUTV, Martha had loved her job. Today she hated it. Monday mornings were generally not her favorite anyway. Tim resisted the transition from weekend to school day more than most, which meant she’d already fought World War III before her workday even began. And today, just one week and a day after the good preacher of Shelter Valley Community Church had been in her home to witness the unveiling of yet another humiliation in the life of Martha Moore, she was supposed to trot on over to his place for a production meeting.

She’d been dreading the encounter so much she’d given herself a whopping headache and permission to skip church the day before. She’d expected the kids to celebrate the opportunity for a day off, as well, but Ellen had insisted on going. And on taking the younger kids with her.

Other than feeling like a slovenly mother shirking her responsibilities, Martha had thoroughly enjoyed the time to herself.

Still, the long soak in a bubble-filled tub, listening to seventies hits she usually got too much criticism over, and reading a book she’d been meaning to get through for months, had not been enough to rid her of the headache. Or the dread.

David Cole Marks mistakenly assumed it was his job to insinuate himself into the lives of the pathetic divorced woman and her four equally pathetic and father-deprived children. Anyone in his or her right mind knew that all Marks’s meant-to-be stuff and seeing signs was crap. Just because she’d received one of life’s hardest blows the only time she’d begrudgingly allowed him into her home, just because he’d witnessed her closer to falling apart than coping famously, did not mean they had any need of him. All it meant was one instance of bad timing.

She ought to know. Her life was filled with them.

Like now.

Dropping the note she’d been holding, the one she’d found taped to her office door as she’d come in moments before, Martha couldn’t imagine a worse time for Katie to throw up and her mother, Bonnie, to be in Washington, D.C., introducing her highly successful concept of child-adult day care for possible national funding. Because of that; Katie’s father, Keith, Martha’s boss and partner in the production of MUTV’s Sunday morning spiritual hour project, had left her in the lurch.

With her oversize black leather tote bag still hung over her shoulder, she slumped down in her seat, staring at Keith’s hurried scrawl on the sticky note.

Wasn’t it just like a man to dump her when she needed him most?

Damn him.

Not that Keith had any idea how much she was dreading this morning’s meeting.

Still, he was a man. And he was dumping her.

Or sort of dumping her. Letting her down. Leaving her to deal with life’s challenges all alone… Okay, she was being a bit self-indulgent here and feeling sorry for herself, but—

“Would a doughnut help?”

Cindy, the short, stocky and perennially cheerful student who was handling the daily computer entries to keep MUTV’s live bulletin board up to date, poked her head into Martha’s tiny office.

“Probably, but I didn’t bring any today. It took me half an hour to get Tim out of bed and another twenty to bully him into opening his eyes and getting dressed.”

“Keith brought some when he stopped by to say he wouldn’t be in.”

“What kind?” Martha didn’t eat doughnuts. She bought them several times a month for everyone else to enjoy, but she hadn’t actually consumed one herself since she’d managed to lose her husband to a woman who didn’t have hips widened by four pregnancies in quick succession.

“Krispy Kreme.”

The freshly made, trademarked confections were delivered from Phoenix to the Valley Diner seven days a week.

“What kind of guy brings doughnuts to work when he isn’t even going to be here to eat them?” she mumbled. Since she’d come to work for Keith Nielson, who was not only her boss, but her friend, he’d been making it difficult for her to maintain her staunch hatred of the male species.

“One who’s feeling guilty?” Cindy suggested, grinning. Martha hadn’t realized she’d mumbled out loud.

“I’ll pass on the doughnut,” she said, thinking of her meeting ahead. “But a cup of coffee would sure be welcome.”

“Got it.” Cindy grinned again and was off.

Of course, bigger hips might discourage preachers, which was a good thing—but the navy slacks and jacket she’d donned that morning looked better when they weren’t bulging at the seams.

Okay, she could do this. She was not going to allow herself to be that weak, to pick up the phone and cancel the meeting. It wasn’t a big deal. And it wouldn’t be a replay of that day almost a year ago when she and Keith had walked into Pastor Edwards’s office for this very same meeting and found him and the beautiful Mrs. Emily Baker making out like randy teenagers. And if she did find David Marks emulating his predecessor, feeling up one of his parishioners, all the better. Then he’d have to leave town.

And no one but Martha and her kids would know that Todd was going to be a father again.

Without her.

No one would know that her four babies hadn’t been enough.

“YOU’RE NUTS, you know that?” Martha laughed. And then stopped, startled, when she heard herself. She hardly ever laughed anymore. Unless she was with Keith, who tried to make her see the lighter side of things.

But not here, not with David Marks, in the chapel at Shelter Valley Community Church. That hallowed room was made for feeling intimidated, reverent, slightly guilty. For listening to sermons. Writing grocery lists. And, as it turned out, for taping a church program.

“I know you’re trying really hard to think so,” the minister challenged with an easy grin. They’d been there an hour, planned almost the entire segment of the show, and he still hadn’t mentioned that afternoon eight days ago when Todd had called with his hideous announcement.

The Moore household had been subdued ever since. But Marks didn’t have even a hint of pity in his eyes when he looked at Martha. Instead there was a genuine warmth, as though he was enjoying their conversation. There was something else, too. Peace, maybe? A kind of empathy unlike any Martha had ever known.

“No one makes contracts to suffer awful things and die,” she said, certain about this at least. “No way is anyone going to believe that we all chose our fates before we were born.”

This was only one of four similar arguments they’d had over the past hour. And while she might’ve had to concede victory on the last three, Martha knew this one she was going to win. Sliding her notebook back into the black satchel, she hooked the strap over her shoulder.

They’d had a good interview. The show would probably be the most interesting they’d had during almost a year of airing the Sunday morning spiritual hour. Open to all kinds of religious groups, the show had featured a variety of segments, but none that were so down to earth and accessible. She was ready to go back to school and pass on her notes to the camera operator, who’d be doing the actual filming at her direction.

“I never said our fates are decided,” he said, leaning back with his feet up and resting on the pew, “only that throughout our lives, our souls choose the circumstances that best allow us to progress. The most important characteristic human beings have is free will.”

With a picture in her mind of some gauzy white clouds inhabited by little blobs arbitrarily choosing to get diseases or have fatal car accidents or be left alone by husbands who preferred sweet young things over years of loyalty and loving, she leaned forward, her elbows on her knees as she glanced sideways at him. Martha opened her mouth to speak. And then changed her mind, several times, about what to say.

“YOU’RE TOO ODD FOR words.”

It probably hadn’t been the best choice. Certainly not the most professional remark she could’ve made. It was the best she could do.

Hands folded across the waist of his light-blue, buttoned shirt, David said, “You think it’s odd to have found a way to live a happy and peaceful life?”

“You’re telling me you’re happy?”

“Yes.” His eyes didn’t waver. Martha had a split-second’s wish that they were rolling the camera right now. She wanted this on tape.

“So you like living alone?”

“I’m not alone.”

“Oh, yeah, you have your angels flying around all the time.”

She felt a tiny bit bad for the sarcasm in her voice, but sometimes this guy was just too hard to take. Martha knew all about faith and hope. She’d had plenty, once upon a time. And then she’d found out the meaning of “things unseen.”

“I do have spiritual companionship.” He nodded, his eyes still alight with that warmth.

“But what about family?” she asked. Despite everything she’d suffered in the past few years, she’d do it all again for the chance to have her brood. They were what made her life worth living, not angels and faith and long-forgotten decisions.

“My parishioners are my family,” he told her. “I consider myself one of the luckiest guys around. Where most men have only one family, I get a hundred of them.”

“Sounds like a hell of a lot of work,” Martha muttered. And then, as usual, stole a red-faced glance upward, apologizing for her irreverence.

“It’s a lot of home-cooked meals,” he countered.

His calm assurance and good-natured response irritated her. And what irritated her even more was that she wasn’t proud of her original reaction. Was she so shallow that she begrudged someone inner peace simply because she hadn’t found it herself?

Or was it more than that? An intolerance for anything but complete honesty? An inability to accept pretty words that covered up the darker side of life?

Or was her irritation self-directed because she used to be naive enough to believe in those pretty words?

“So you can honestly tell me you’ve never longed for a wife of your own?” she asked him. “Never held a baby and wanted one with your own blood running through its veins?”

The question was far too personal. But her need to challenge him was too compelling to stop.

He didn’t move, didn’t drop his legs from their casual position. But his answer was longer in coming. And his knuckles, on hands that had been loosely clasped, were white.

“Never.”

Liar.

“So you like being alone in that house out back every night? You like waking up to the silence every morning?”

What in the hell was the matter with her?

“I didn’t say that.”

The words were so soft they carried their own peculiar kind of power. It resonated through her.

“But you don’t want a wife or family,” she said with equal softness.

He sat forward, elbows on his knees, staring downward. “No, I don’t.”

“Then what do you want?”

“To serve the people in my care. To teach them how to find the peace and happiness they all crave.” He paused, turned to look at her. “To be allowed to live my life in the way I choose—alone—without having to justify that decision to those who can’t understand.”

He was hiding something.

“Then I guess you should’ve chosen a different profession,” Martha replied. “You can’t set yourself up as the authority on morality and moral decisions and just expect the people around you to accept the validity of your pronouncements. Especially not here.”

Not anymore. There’d been a day when the members of Shelter Valley Community Church had been filled with trust. But no more.

“In the first place, I’ve never set myself up as an authority on anything,” David said, sitting up to face her. “However, I do realize that I’m in a position to be an example to those around me, and I will not do anything to jeopardize that. Period. You have my word on it.”

He wasn’t talking about his parishioners anymore. He was talking straight to her.

Unfortunately, his message was one she simply couldn’t believe.

CHAPTER THREE

THE PRODUCTION of Pastor David Marks’s portion of the MUTV Sunday morning spiritual hour took only three meetings—the initial consultation and then two other sessions over the next couple of weeks. One to film, and one to preview and approve the edited version. Disappointed when taping was wrapped up so proficiently, David waited around MUTV the second Monday in February, after the final viewing while Martha gave wrap-up instructions to her predominantly student crew.

He’d really been hoping for an excuse to spend a little more time with her. With luck, they might’ve been able to become friends. He might even have been able to offer her some guidance, or at least reassurance. Whatever instincts prompted him in his work prompted him strongly where she was concerned. The woman was asking too much of herself. Expecting too much.

And helping people was how he filled his calendar.

“You’re very good at what you do,” he said as the last of the students left and she led him to her small office off to one side of the surprisingly modern studio.

She shrugged, her shoulders slim and feminine in the white oxford blouse she had tucked into a pair of black cotton slacks. “I’ve got great kids working for me,” she replied easily. “Enthusiastic, smart, eager to learn. They love what they do.”

“So do you.”

She turned, met his gaze for a brief second longer than the last time he’d been able to catch her attention. “Yeah, I do.” Then she added, “You do, too, don’t you?”

“More than I’d ever imagined.”

It was the truth. His job had given him a life. One that was solid and meaningful.

“Well…” she dropped a clipboard on the desk, then faced him, her arms crossed. “It’s been good working with you, Pastor.”

“David.”

She looked down, her short, flyaway hair tempting him to forget that the part of him that might think running his fingers through a woman’s hair was long since dead and buried.

“I prefer Pastor,” she finally said quietly.

“Ellen’s come to see me a couple of times.” He hadn’t been planning to tell her.

“She has?” He wasn’t sure which was more dominant in the expression she turned on him, her surprise or her concern.

He nodded. “She just needed someone to talk to.”

“She’s always talked to me!”

“She didn’t want to hurt you.”

The light of understanding entered her eyes at about the same moment her features settled into despondency. “She’s upset about Todd. The new baby.”

“And you. She doesn’t understand why a woman as loving and giving and wonderful as you should be hurt so much.”

“I got over Todd Moore years ago.” Her eyes might have moistened slightly, but it was the trembling of her chin that told David how much she was holding back.

“Did you?” He didn’t think so.

“Yes. Of course. Kind of hard for a woman to pine for a man who’d leave her with four children to raise while he ran off to be a kid himself.”

“So why are you squeezing the heck out of your arms? What emotion are you hiding?” he asked, glancing pointedly toward hands that had been lying slack only seconds before.

“You’re very observant.”

“You’re avoiding the question.”

With a small grin, she peered back at him.

Given time, he hoped to reach this woman.

Maybe even help bring some peace to her life.

“It’s just good to hear that my kid thinks so highly of me,” she said. “I worry how unfair all of this has been to Ellen. She’s taken on a lot with the younger kids, especially since she got her driver’s license.”

“Life isn’t fair.” It was one of the first lessons he’d had to learn.

Martha frowned. “That’s an odd thing for a preacher to say.”

“Why?” he asked, serious and intent. “It’s the truth.” She turned her head, not looking at him. He was losing her. “Besides,” he added with a grin, “you already know I’m odd. You told me so. A couple of weeks ago. In my own chapel. It’s one of those moments that stand out.”

She smiled and he breathed a little easier. “Give it up, Preacher,” she said lightly. “You aren’t going to send me on a guilt trip over that one.”

She had him all wrong. Sending her on a guilt trip was the last thing on his agenda.

But it probably wasn’t a bad idea to keep her guessing. At least he had her attention.

Now he just had to find a reason for them to spend more time together.

ELLEN WASN’T HAVING the best day. Thursday night, less than a week after the most perfect Valentine’s Day she’d ever imagined, she’d gone and fought with Aaron over something stupid. He’d agreed to partner with Karen Anderson for his biology project, and Ellen had been furious—even though she knew that Karen had won first prize in a state college science competition the year before and was the perfect partner for a young man who hoped to graduate summa cum laude. Never mind that she—Ellen, his girlfriend—had equally high marks. However, she was majoring in English, not sciences.

Clocking out in the back room at Wal-Mart, she grabbed her sweater and purse from her locker, said goodbye to the mentally challenged man who did nighttime janitorial work, and hurried out to her car, avoiding eye contact with anyone. The customers had been unusually cantankerous that evening and she didn’t feel like talking.

Aaron had accused her of not trusting him. And she didn’t blame him. She’d overreacted.

And she did trust him. It was just men in general that she had trouble believing in. She hadn’t told him about her father’s last phone call—the new baby on the way. Nor about the nights following that call when she’d heard her mother crying in her room after she thought they were all asleep. Ellen hadn’t known what to do, what she could possibly say that could ease her mother’s pain. In the end, she’d cried, too.

Sometimes life sucked.

Her car wouldn’t start. Ellen turned the key a third time, pumping the gas pedal, but nothing happened. And she knew why. She’d just used the last of her gas to flood the tank. The gauge had been on Empty when she’d driven to work, but she’d been running late—because of fighting with Aaron—and had decided to fuel up on the way home.

She should’ve done it after she left college that afternoon, before picking up her sisters and brother from school. There was a station right around the corner from the university.

Head on the steering wheel, she promised herself she wouldn’t cry. She’d never run out of gas before. Wasn’t sure what she should do.

Except not call her mother. There was no way she was going to add more problems to her mom’s already overflowing plate. The gas station was too far to walk. And she couldn’t call Aaron. Not after she’d stomped off the way she had.

This was her problem. She’d gotten herself into it. She’d get herself out of it.

Filled with resolve, feeling better, stronger, more in control, she climbed out of the car and headed for the highway off-ramp just beyond the Wal-Mart parking lot. She’d noticed a girl hitchhiking out there once before, and she’d been picked up almost immediately by a car coming off the highway and heading toward town. Not that it surprised her. That was how things were in Shelter Valley, where there was always someone nice willing to help out.

Purse in hand, she reached the road, stuck out her thumb with uncharacteristic boldness and waited. She would ask to be dropped at Aaron’s dorm. First she’d beg his forgiveness, because that was all she really cared about at the moment. And then, if he accepted her apology, she’d tell him about her car. He would know where to find a gas can. And he’d drive her back to the parking lot.

Without telling her even once how stupid she’d been to run out of gas in the first place. That was Aaron’s way.

It was only one of the hundreds of reasons she loved him so much.

Lost in thoughts of the boyfriend she couldn’t imagine living without, Ellen almost didn’t notice the brand-new Lexus that pulled up beside her. It took the open passenger door and the loud “Get in” to garner her attention. She didn’t recognize the car—or the older man at the wheel—which was unusual in Shelter Valley. But she certainly recognized that the suit he was wearing was expensive.

He could be a friend of Will and Becca Parsons, her mother’s best friends. As president of Montford University, Will Parsons was always entertaining rich and important people from Phoenix. And his wife, Becca, the new mayor of Shelter Valley, knew her share of rich folk, too.

Or maybe he was some friend of the Montfords—descendents of the town’s founder. They were richer than Will and Becca Parsons.

“You going to town?” she asked, holding the edge of the door as she looked into the car.

“I am.” He smiled. “If you’d like a ride, hop in.”

With a lift in spirits that had been plummeting all day, Ellen climbed inside, thanking him and giving directions to Aaron’s dorm. “It’s just this side of the main light in town,” she told him. “It’s not far out.”

Finally something positive was happening today. It was just like Pastor Marks had said. If you could stand up to the challenges, and if you did everything you could to help yourself, assistance would come.

“Have you ever been to Shelter Valley before?” she asked the man, who seemed friendly the couple of times he glanced over at her.

“Nope.”

“It’s a great place. You’ll like it.”

“I’m counting on it,” he said, smiling at her again.

“The turn’s just ahead.”

He nodded.

“It’s after that next group of trees.”

He nodded again, tapping his thumb on the steering wheel as he drove.

“There!” she said quickly, when it looked like he was going to miss the road.

He drove past.

“That was it!” Ellen said, sorry he’d have to turn around, that she was costing him more time than he’d intended. She’d tried to be so clear.

He didn’t slow down. Didn’t turn around. Didn’t even act as if he’d heard her.

“Excuse me.” She tried again. “Did you hear what I said? You missed the turn.” Did he have Alzheimer’s or something? She’d heard Becca talking to her mother about one of the ladies at the new adult day care in town and how her family had had to take her keys away because she’d driven off and forgotten not only where she was going, but most of the rules of driving as well.

God, don’t let him wreck the car. Mom would just die if she were to get a phone call that Ellen had been in an accident. It was a parent’s worst nightmare. Everyone knew that.

She tried two more times to get his attention.

He didn’t say anything, just smiled at her and nodded.

But on the other side of town he slowed down, and Ellen breathed her first sigh of relief. She’d get out as soon as she could, find a phone, call Aaron. Even angry, he’d come and get her. And she’d call for someone to help the old man, too.

Not that he really appeared old enough to have Alzheimer’s, but it did hit some people in their fifties. And no one she knew had ever acted this strange before….

“This isn’t anyplace you want to be,” knowing for sure that he was confused when he turned into the parking lot of a run-down and apparently deserted single-story building. It housed one-room apartments and used to be a hotel back in Shelter Valley’s early gold-mining days.

The man was scaring her.

Especially when he pulled up to a door and grabbed a key from the console between them. “Let’s go,” he said.

“Go where?” Was he crazy? She wasn’t going anywhere with him.

“Oh, so that’s the game you want to play?” he asked, not sounding crazy at all. He held her wrist tightly. Suddenly he had the air of a powerful businessman used to getting exactly what he wanted.

But what did he want? The man was rich. Nicely dressed. Driving an expensive car.

“I don’t know why—”

“Let’s go, sweetie,” he interrupted her. “I don’t have a lot of time before my wife’ll expect me back—”

He broke off abruptly, frowning as though he’d said too much, letting go of her wrist.

Ellen didn’t even think. She wrenched open the car door, intending to run as fast as she could out to the road.

With one foot out of the car, she propelled herself forward, trying to figure out which direction would be the safest bet. She had the sick feeling she might only get one chance.

As she hesitated, her other foot tangled with her ankle and she started to fall.

Except that the man was there, catching her. “So you like it rough, huh?” he asked, sounding excited in a way she’d never heard before but recognized, anyway. “They didn’t tell me that.”

“No!” She tried to pull away from his grasp, unable to feel anything but the urgent need to escape. His words made no sense to her.

His grip made no sense to her.

Aaron! She screamed inside, even as her mind refused to work. Something terrible was happening and she didn’t know why.

She had to get away. For Aaron. For Mom. For herself. She had to do something.

The man held her body in an iron clutch, carrying her to the door just a few feet away. She kicked him. Hard. On the shins. Over and over. She tried to reach higher.

“You little bitch,” he said, but he didn’t sound mad. Somehow she seemed to be pleasing him.

Oh God.

Ellen screamed, so long and hard the sound ripped at her throat. There was no one around to hear. He covered her mouth with his own, swallowing her cries.

She had to vomit. And bit him to make him let her go.

He bit her back, sliding her down to hold her body between his legs while, with one hand on her swollen mouth, he unlocked the door with the other.

Then, his hands on her breasts, he pushed her ahead of him into the room and kicked the door shut behind them.

CHAPTER FOUR

AT EIGHT O’CLOCK ON Thursday night, David Marks was trying to convince himself that he was interested in the National Geographic show on television. He found the plight of pandas interesting, but he’d already seen the program twice.

And he couldn’t stand another sitcom, another half hour of laugh tracks. Or news that was a repeat of what he’d heard that morning.

He’d read for an hour. Chores were done. This week’s sermon finished. Bills paid.

Never since he’d joined the ministry had he had downtime like this. Exactly the opposite, in fact. In his experience, there were always people who’d take advantage of an extended hand—usually too many of them to help. His challenge, and concern, had always been what to do with those he didn’t reach, those he couldn’t help. He’d always had to spread himself thin—so thin he’d had no time for television or extra reading or boredom or discontent. Living in this town, which didn’t trust him, didn’t need him, was an experience unlike any he’d encountered before.

“The panda is…”

What more could he do to convince the people of Shelter Valley to use his services? To do more than just show up at church and nod thoughtfully at his sermons? To ask more of him?

“Watch how playfully…”

How much longer could he hang around where he wasn’t needed?

As long as it takes.

Great. Just what he wanted to hear.

His sarcasm got no response.

“Where’ve you been?” he said aloud, staring at the television screen, registering little.

Right here.

“I haven’t heard from you in two weeks.”

You haven’t asked.

No, he supposed he hadn’t. He hated it when he did that—got so caught up in himself and his mission that he forgot he wasn’t doing this on his own.

“So tell me, is there a reason for me to be here?”

What do you think?

“I’m asking you.”

What do you think?

David didn’t know why he bothered trying to take the easy way out. Expecting him to do the work. There was no getting around the voice in his head. It always told him what he intuitively knew was right—even he didn’t recognize the rightness of what that voice said until he heard it.

And it didn’t give up.

It was why he’d grown to trust them so implicitly.

“I think I have a job to do here.”

Yes.

“There are people here who need my help.”

Yes.

“I’m here for them, not for me.”

No.

What? “What?” he reiterated out loud, sitting in the middle of his couch, feet planted firmly on the floor, staring at a TV screen that could have been popping bubbles for all he knew.

There was no answer to his question. And that happened sometimes, too.

“Then…who am I here for?” He tried rephrasing it.

You.

David stood, turned off the television. That answer hadn’t come from his angel. Because this wasn’t about him. He knew that. His life was about serving others.

He’d bake some cookies.

And take them to the veterinary clinic in the morning. If Cassie and Zack didn’t want them, then surely their clients would. Dogs ate dirt and grass and practically everything else. Surely they’d eat David’s oatmeal cookies.

The first batch wasn’t done evenly—he’d forgotten to preheat the oven and had just shoved the cookies in cold. But cookie dough was a popular taste these days.

And the second batch burned—he hadn’t bothered with the timer, knowing he’d be right there and would remember to check them. Then he’d decided to do the dishes, which led to taking out the trash, which led to a walk around the backyard just to assure himself that there wasn’t something else that needed doing. He’d known the minute he’d gone back inside what he’d done. His nose had told him.

No problem. Dogs were color-blind. And they were used to eating crunchy food. They wouldn’t care if their cookies were hard and black.

And maybe, while he was at the clinic, he’d see about getting a dog of his own. Cassie and Zack would know if there were some puppies, or even an older dog, that needed a home.

He scraped the last of the burned cookies from the pan and was just heading to the sink when there was a noise at his kitchen door. It sounded more as if something had fallen against the door than a knock. He stopped. Listened.

Nothing.

Setting down the pan, David moved to the door and opened it slowly, half expecting to see a stray pooch there, looking for a home. Maybe it had smelled the cookies….

What he saw stopped his heart.

“Ellen?” He knew it was her. But he didn’t recognize her at all.

The girl was a mess. Her clothes were torn. Her eyes and lips swollen. Her short blond hair was plastered to her head, except for a couple of places where it was sticking straight up.

What kind of accident could have done this to her?

“Honey?”

She didn’t respond. Just stood there. Staring blankly at the doorjamb as though she was seeing something far away—or deep inside herself.

He wasn’t sure she knew where she was.

“Ellen.” He spoke more firmly. He was afraid to touch her. And yet he had to find out what had happened. The extent of her injuries. She could have broken bones or be bleeding internally. “Come inside, child.”

He had to get her into the light. Get her to talk. Get help.

Keeping a tight grip on his heart, he forced logical thought to take over. This wasn’t Ellen. It wasn’t a child. Wasn’t his parishioner. Or the daughter of Martha Moore. This was simply a hurt human being in need of help.

Slowly, she took a step forward. Stumbled. Whimpered.

David’s hands flew out, catching her as she started to fall. Taking all her weight upon himself, he half carried her inside. With her head buried against his shoulder, the sounds she made were unintelligible. He had no idea if she was trying to speak or protesting painful movement.

“It’s okay, honey,” he said softly, shutting the door behind him as he guided her gently to a chair in the kitchen. “I’ll call your mother.”

“No.” She refused to sit down, buried her face more completely in the crook of his elbow. Her next words were mumbled.

“What?” he asked, holding her by the arms as he freed her face enough to look at her. “I didn’t get that.”

“The light’s too bright,” she said, and started to sob. “Please,” she hiccupped. “No light. And no calls.”

“I need the light, Ellen. I need to get a look at you. And call for help.”

“No!” she shrieked. “No calls. No one…” She started to cry again. “No one but you.”

Her insistence struck fear in the heart he’d silenced, filling his mind with dreadful suspicion.

“You need to see a doctor, honey! We need to know how badly injured you are.”

“No! I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not.” But he had a horrible feeling the calls could wait, that Ellen’s most serious injuries weren’t physical. Authority came through out of necessity. “You need to tell me what happened, Ellen. Now.”

A fresh spate of sobs erupted, and she clutched the sleeve of his shirt with her fingers.

“Tell me, honey,” he said, growing more and more certain that he wasn’t ready to hear what he suspected she would—eventually—tell him.

An agonizing couple of minutes passed while she cried, then took a deep breath, only to choke on another outburst of agony.

“You have to tell me what happened, Ellen.” David forced as much calm into the words as his thick throat allowed. “You need help.”

“I—” She broke off, tightening her grip on his shirt as she lifted her head enough to look up at him. “Only…you.” She stumbled over the words. “Only you.”

Because he knew he had no choice, David nodded. “I’m the only one here.”

He pushed her gently into the chair he’d pulled out for her, then sat in the adjoining chair and clasped her hands.

She hadn’t said a word, but David knew. And felt the acid burning of vomit rising to his throat.

Help me. The plea was a demand, issued as urgently as he’d ever spoken to whatever higher power was guiding his life.

I’m here.

Okay, then. He took a deep breath.

“Ellen?”

“I ran out of gas.”

He probably shouldn’t be holding her hands, shouldn’t touch her at all.

She needs you. Listen.

He did. To his heart. He released one of her hands and smoothed the hair back from Ellen’s swollen cheeks, brushed it off a forehead grimy with sweat and God knew what else.

He was going to see someone in hell for this.

Later.

“He…he…” She began to shake. Violently.

David couldn’t remember ever being more scared. And only once before in his life had he felt this sick.

Steady.

Yeah. Yeah. Steady. He knew what life was about. All of it. The happiness. And the suffering, too.

“Someone hurt you when you ran out of gas?” he asked, compelled to get this over with. To get to the healing part.

“I hitchhiked,” she said through chattering teeth.

“And someone picked you up.”

When she nodded, David’s heart sank.

“It was a man,” he said.

With a second, jerky nod, she confirmed his worst fears. But he continued, anyway, getting her to tell him where the man had taken her.

“He told me if I didn’t take my clothes off, he’d rip them.” She was shivering, huddled in her chair, but speaking clearly now, as though she was somehow detached from it all. “And when I didn’t, he started to—so I…” She faltered and started to cry again, more softly.

“So you did.”

“Yes.” The whisper was barely audible. And tore through David with such ferocity he didn’t know how he stayed seated.

I’m the wrong man for this one, he thought grimly.

Steady.

You be steady! The angry words were spoken only in his mind.

I am. Always.

Anguish ripped through him. Hers. His. Too much anguish.

Shut up!

“He…touched…me….”

No. I can’t stand this. Don’t go! he implored the voice.

I’m always here.

Ellen described the humiliation and horror of having a strange man touch her in places he should never have seen. Of having her body violated in ways that were unfathomable to her.

But if he’d only touched her? With his hands, as she was describing? Hadn’t…raped her?

“And then he made me watch him take off his clothes….”

She closed her eyes and David’s throat shut off all air. He desperately wanted to find someone else to help this poor child who was beyond anything he could do for her.

“He…raped me, Pastor Marks.” She cried aloud what his heart already knew—already felt. “He just kept doing it to me over and over…”

He could feel her agony. Her debasement. He also knew—in the midst of his almost uncontainable rage, unbearable anguish—that she needed him.

Because the biggest part of her suffering was yet to come. And David sensed that these next few days and weeks would determine her ability to recover, to live a normal life or ever love again. He knew far more than anyone realized he did.

This is why I’m here. He understood that now.

He just wasn’t sure he was ready for the journey ahead. Or the possible consequences.

He knew only that his fate had been determined that long-ago day when he’d asked for this spiritual path and promised to do all it required of him. He’d traded hell for peace, and if, now, that peace cost him some time in hell, he had no choice but to pay.

HEART FROZEN Martha sped toward Shelter Valley Community Church and the four-bedroom rectory immediately behind it. From the moment her first child had been born, she’d been dreading one of those calls. The kind that started with “I’m sorry…” insert “Martha, Mrs. Moore, Ms. Moore, Ma’am.” It had played itself out in all those ways and more over the years.

She’d just never imagined it coming from a preacher.

That had to be good news. If Ellen were dying, she’d be on her way to the hospital, not waiting in the big house behind the church. There’d be emergency personnel around, not a minister.

Of course, he’d said Ellen needed a doctor and refused to see one….

Panic made Martha’s movements jerky as she turned the last corner.

It had to be good news that her daughter had been capable of making that decision.

But why would she? Ellen didn’t have a fear of doctors. So why would her daughter suddenly be averse to…

There were no vehicles other than the pastor’s green Explorer at the house. No ambulance. No flashing lights.

That had to be good news. It had to be. Martha couldn’t face anything else.

And then David Marks opened his kitchen door and Martha had her first glimpse of her beautiful daughter, huddled there with a blanket around her shoulders, eyes filled with fear and incomprehension—and a desperate plea for her mother to make things better. And what little bit of faith Martha had been hoarding deep inside died right then and there.

MARTHA HELD ELLEN in her arms all the way to the hospital in Phoenix. The girl had tried to tell her mother what had happened, but David had done most of the talking. Enough for Martha to know Ellen needed immediate medical attention.

Talk could come later.

Ellen had refused to go to the clinic in Shelter Valley, and Martha hadn’t been able to ignore her battered daughter’s plea to keep her rape a secret. She didn’t want people’s pity or concern, didn’t want their questions or assessing looks. Martha had insisted on calling Greg Richards, though. The sheriff of Shelter Valley had a job to do. A crime to solve, the likes of which Shelter Valley had never known before.

One of their own had been violated. Right there in the town’s safe and protected limits.

Greg said he’d meet them at the hospital in Phoenix.

“Dr. Anderson’s waiting for us in the emergency room,” Martha told David as he drove with a calm she envied down the long dark stretch of highway between Shelter Valley and the nearest big city.

The only person other than the sheriff that she’d called had been her best friend, Becca Parsons, who’d arranged for the doctor to meet them at the hospital. In the meantime, they’d given Ellen some over-the-counter acetaminophen with an added sleep aid. Ellen was obviously floating in and out, but she was listening to her mother. Martha could tell by the movement in her daughter’s ribs against her own, the tightening of Ellen’s hand squeezing hers. Ellen didn’t want to see a doctor. Martha didn’t blame her.

“You’ve met Becca Parsons and her little daughter, Bethany,” Martha said to David, rubbing her hand across Ellen’s back. The girl had refused to let her mother go home and get fresh clothes for her. Or to borrow a T-shirt and shorts from Pastor Marks. She’d refused to let her clothes be taken from her body.

She’d refused to let her mother go, period, which was why Martha—in spite of seat belt laws—had a twenty-year-old child in her lap. Let some cop try to stop them and give her a hard time about it.

“Of course I know them,” David was saying. “As the new mayor, she gave me my official welcome to town.” He barely took his eyes from the road, but Martha felt his glance in their direction. “Will and I have played golf a time or two.”

Martha wondered why Becca hadn’t mentioned that.

“Dr. Anderson’s the one who helped them have Bethany,” Martha said now, hoping to reassure her daughter, somehow, that miracles did happen. That everything was going to be okay.

Reassure her child of something she knew in her heart was not the truth.

“After twenty years of trying, the impossible became possible, thanks to Dr. Anderson’s care and compassion.” If nothing else, she was filling the car with something besides the agony in her arms. In her daughter’s heart.

The hope that sometimes life did work out for the best. The belief that good people did win. That justice would be done.

Ellen’s fingers relaxed their grip on Martha’s blouse, just for a second. The tightness in Martha’s heart eased for that second, too.

“And now they have Kim, too.” David’s words were matter-of-fact.

The little Korean boy Becca and Will had adopted the previous summer. “Yeah.”

“Each is an example of faith,” he said softly.

Ellen whimpered and Martha moved her hand from her daughter’s back to the hair that was still caked to her head. Martha swallowed back nausea. God, she needed some time alone with her baby.

To bathe her. To help Ellen feel clean again.

“Faith?” Because of the child in her arms she had to restrain the intensity of the anger his words instilled. But she did so with great difficulty. Who did he think he was? Preaching, even now! She wanted to scream at him to drop it. “You got that one wrong, Preacher,” she said, rocking Ellen gently as the girl moaned again. “Becca had long ago lost faith and given up any hope of having a baby. Bethany’s arrival was sheer luck. Or the twisted humor of fate.”

The same fate that was playing with them now? As they drove Martha’s sweet daughter to see how much damage had actually been done—and to prevent any consequences from the hell she’d suffered while Martha was at home, oblivious, nagging Tim to do his math homework.

“Will never lost faith. Or gave up hope.”

The words weren’t loud, but they were firm.

Martha couldn’t reply. She didn’t feel like arguing. Let the man have his fantasies about the power of faith and hope.

She couldn’t afford them.

CHAPTER FIVE

IT WAS ALMOST MIDNIGHT by the time they got home. After the doctor had taken care of her, Ellen had met with a police artist who’d come to the hospital and she’d given a description of her attacker. Then she’d swallowed something to help her sleep—and she’d been dead to the world in the back seat of the Explorer before they left the lights of Phoenix behind. A counseling appointment had been arranged for the following afternoon. Martha anxiously stood by as David pulled her sleeping daughter out of the car and carried her into the house.

“What’s going on?” Shelley was there, wide-eyed and looking younger than she had in years, as they came into the foyer.

With a quick hug for her teenager who’d been so full of anger lately, Martha said, “In a minute,” and led David through the sprawling single-story house to Ellen’s bedroom.

Shelley was right behind them, and without saying a word, helped her mother undress her sister and get her into bed, while David spoke quietly to the other two kids out in the hall. Rebecca had appeared shortly after they’d come in. Tim, if he’d been asleep, had obviously heard them and woken up.

“Where’d these clothes come from?” Shelley whispered, uncharacteristically folding the garments and laying them carefully on the dresser.

“The hospital.”

God, Martha wondered, how was she going to do this? How could she tell her kids what had happened to their older sister? How could she help any of them live with the fear that had been permanently introduced to their home that night?

How was she going to get through these next minutes when what she needed to do was crawl under the blankets and cry until there were no tears left?

Shelley didn’t ask what had happened. The kids all knew what Martha had known when she’d received the call from David Marks earlier that evening. There was some sort of emergency with Ellen. Martha had called from the hospital to tell them she’d be home soon—bringing Ellen—and that they’d talk when she got there.

Rape wasn’t something she could talk to her daughters about over the phone.

And then she was in the living room with her two younger girls, sitting on the floor with them, one under each arm, their backs against the couch. She’d pushed the coffee table away, turned on a fire in the gas fireplace. And tried to take comfort from the familiarity around her. The books on the bookshelf, just as they’d been for so many years. Books filled with wisdom.

And escape.

Tim had disappeared. She had Pastor David Marks to thank for that. And knew, somehow, that her son would be told what he needed to know.

“She was bruised.” Shelley was the first to speak.

“I didn’t get to see her.” Rebecca’s long, gangly legs were pulled up to her chest. “She was in a car accident, wasn’t she?”

Martha swallowed.

“Did someone die?” Rebecca’s sweetness tore at Martha’s heart. She smoothed a hand down the side of her daughter’s head, gaining what strength she could from the feel of her silky black hair.

“Is the car totaled?” Shelley asked without any inflection at all. The sixteen-year-old knew a car was not the problem. “Was it Ellen’s fault?”

Martha took a deep breath, lowered her hands, taking a young hand in each of hers.

“Girls, Ellen was—” Her throat closed. She couldn’t do it. Didn’t want her daughters to see the tears she couldn’t seem to control now that she was home.

“What, Mama?” Rebecca’s reversion to the name she hadn’t called her mother since she was six told the whole story.

Shelley didn’t say a word. Martha had a feeling she knew.

How did she say this delicately? Disguise something so ugly to make it palatable for fifteen-year-old ears?

“She was raped tonight.”

Not at all how she wanted to say it. Not at all what she wanted to say. Not to them. Not ever. Not to anyone.

She didn’t mean them to, but tears slid slowly down her cheeks, unchecked by hands that were still holding tightly to her daughters’. She’d talked to doctors, to the sheriff. She’d talked to David Marks. But hearing the words in the presence of her children made them suddenly real.

“HOW ARE THEY DOING?”

The pastor was waiting for her in the kitchen when Martha pushed her way wearily inside an hour later.

“Okay for now,” she said. “I gave them each one of the sleeping pills I got from Dr. Anderson.”

“Sounded like Rebecca took it hard.”

The girl, in her childhood innocence, had done the things Martha had denied herself. She’d yelled. Denying Martha’s words. She’d paced. She’d spat words that Martha hadn’t even known she knew. She’d wished a man dead, over and over again. And, eventually, she’d sobbed her heart out.

“I’m more worried about Shelley,” Martha confessed, sliding into a chair at the kitchen table. The same chair Keith Nielson had sat in almost a year before, after they’d returned from a trip to the same hospital in Phoenix.

Tim had broken his leg. And Martha’s boss had taken over, helping her through the crisis. In spite of the fact that, with his wife thinking about leaving him, he’d been in a crisis of his own. Keith and Martha had kissed that night.

“I was impressed with her sensitivity and maturity,” David Marks was saying.

“She’s scared to death.”

“That’s understandable,” he said, bringing Martha a cup of coffee and sitting down opposite her. It had to be at least two in the morning. “It’ll pass.”

Martha shook her head and took a sip, hoping it was decaffeinated. “Life scares her. That’s why she always acts so tough.”

“She’s lucky she has you.”

Martha smiled tiredly, thanking him for that trite little statement. Because it didn’t feel little at all.

Silence settled over the kitchen. Martha wasn’t ready for it. But knew that it had to come anyway. Activity was over for now.

“I don’t think this was an ordinary incident—if there is such a thing.”

His words fell into the quiet of the night, inciting an anger that had been usurped by exhaustion.

“I’ll agree with you there,” she said, some of the rage infiltrating her tone. “Nothing ordinary about having your daughter attacked.”

He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, the lateness of the hour showing in the slump of his shoulders, the redness of his eyes.

Tapping her knee with one finger, he said, “I mean the attack itself,” he said quietly. “It’s suspicious.”

She couldn’t take any more tonight. Ellen had been raped. Couldn’t it just be an ordinary rape? Couldn’t they leave it at that? Martha was too worn out to consider anything more.

“How so?”

She should offer him something to go with the coffee. Toast. Eggs. A good stiff drink.

Except that he was a minister who taught the benefits of moderation.

Did that mean someone who went to his church couldn’t drink in front of him?

Not that she had anything in the house. She’d thrown all the stuff away the day Todd left. Afraid her kids might get into it.

Or that she might.

David Marks was still sitting there staring at the floor, wrinkled shirt untucked from his jeans, not looking like any preacher she’d ever known. He seemed to be choosing his words with care.

“When Ellen didn’t play rough, he stopped being rough on her, as though he only wanted to do that if she did.”

Yup, Martha had been right. Her mind couldn’t take this in, couldn’t analyze, couldn’t even consider what he seemed to be saying.

“Generally speaking, rapists are cowards,” he said next.

And she’d always thought cowards were harmless.

“They pick on victims weaker than them, which gives them a feeling of strength.” He spoke slowly, softly, lulling Martha’s exhausted mind into listening.

“They use that strength to keep their sense of power alive. It feeds on itself. If there’s a break in the adrenaline rush, fear can just as easily take over and feed them, too. That’s why they tell women in self-defense classes to be firm and unafraid. Their show of confidence will often serve to disconnect the attacker from his strength, giving the victim a chance to escape. Sometimes it’s even enough to make the rapist turn tail and run.”

Great, so he was saying that Ellen only needed to yell at the guy instead of getting scared and she’d have been spared the atrocities that had changed her life forever? If Martha had taught her daughter self-defense, then Ellen would still be young at heart and innocent and relatively carefree?

God, Martha didn’t even know if her daughter had been a virgin. She hadn’t been able to bear asking.

“In the same vein, being rough keeps the adrenaline going, gives them courage.”

He wasn’t done yet?

This was far more than she needed to know. Did preachers take some course in Rapist 101? Or maybe Criminal 101? “So what’s your point, Preacher?”

“Ellen’s attacker treated her gently when she quit fighting him.”

Oh. Well, leave it to him to find something to be thankful for. She’d feel irritated with the whole idea—except that she was thankful.

It wasn’t much. But it was something.

“There’s another fact that’s bothering me,” he said.

Now what? Resting a head that felt twice its normal weight on her hand, Martha looked at him. She should be going to bed, letting him get to bed. Just as soon as she could manage to stand up.

“I’m not sure Ellen mentioned this to Greg, but when she first told me the story, she said something about the man trying to give her money when he dropped her off.”

“She told Greg,” Martha said. “He found it odd, too. But not as odd as the guy dropping her off in the first place.” At Ellen’s request, the bastard had driven her daughter to the church when he’d finished with her. Two things to be thankful for on this god-awful night. The preacher was having an effect on her.

But only because she was so weary.

“So we’re dealing with a guy who commits crimes and then feels remorse about them,” she continued. “Greg says it’s almost a classic composite of one of the four basic criminal types.”

David didn’t say anything. Just refilled her coffee cup and stayed with her.

“Thank you.”

“For what?”

“Being here.” She didn’t know what she would’ve done without him tonight. And didn’t know who else she could have leaned on so completely. He was a man whose job was to see to his parishioners; it was nothing personal. He’d do the same for anyone. A paid professional, just like the doctor who’d attended to Ellen that night. And the sheriff. And the counselor who’d stopped in briefly and was seeing her again tomorrow.

Martha told herself she was at no risk of making more of it than it was—depending on someone again, the way she’d depended on Todd.

She glanced at the clock on the wall. It was six in the morning on the East Coast.

“I have to call her father.”

David grabbed the cordless phone off the wall cradle. Handed it to her.

She stared to dial, then hung up. Tried a second time. She hadn’t talked to her ex-husband since his call weeks before to tell them about the baby. She rarely spoke to him anymore.

But every single time, he made her crazy.

Crazy with pain. And anger. And all the things he’d left her with that she didn’t understand.

Like the ever-present feeling that she wasn’t good enough.

“Martha?”

She peered over at the minister, noticing the lines around his eyes when he smiled. “I’m glad to be here,” he said, holding her gaze with his own.

Something happened to her in that second. She felt…a jolt. A sudden, unexpected peace. She wanted to believe in it. To hope that someday things would be okay.

But that was only because she was overtired.

She knew better.

Breaking eye contact, Martha nodded.

And dialed.

EVEN HEARING ONLY ONE side of the phone conversation between Ellen’s parents, David could tell what was happening.

Martha was asking for support that Todd Moore was unwilling—or unable—to give her.

Will Parsons had told David a little about his once-closest friend, Todd Moore. He’d described Todd as a man searching for meaning in life, trying his best to be fair while daring to seek out happiness during his time on earth. David had been prepared to give the man the benefit of the doubt. But now…

“I don’t know what to say to her, either, Todd. I don’t really think it matters all that much. She needs you. Especially you—” Martha turned away as her voice broke. “Right now.”

David watched the slender muscles along the back of her neck as she nodded. “I understand.”

Then she murmured, “Yeah, I know.” Her voice had softened, filled with the kind of intimacy that could only develop over years of knowing everything there was to know about a person.

“Okay.” Another nod. Slower.

Watching as much as listening, David filed away the insights he was learning, sensing that he was going to need them.

Todd Moore was letting Martha down again. And she was allowing him do it.

She expected nothing more.

Which might be why she got nothing more.

“I’ll tell her.” Her voice was filled with resignation and disappointment. Of the two, the resignation seemed stronger.

David felt a tug of concern that he couldn’t ignore. Resignation was a step further than disappointment into emotional darkness. And much harder to combat. Perhaps he’d been led to a job that was beyond his limited capabilities.

“EL?”

Shelley slid quietly into her older sister’s bedroom a few minutes before the alarm was due to go off on Friday morning.

“Yeah?”

“You awake?” She wanted to climb into the double bed, find Ellen’s toes with her own, cuddle up like she used to do when she had nightmares. But she was afraid to touch her. Didn’t know if that was okay.

Or even if she really wanted to.

“Yeah.”

“Can I…sit?” She motioned to the end of the bed.

“Of course.” Ellen sat up, propping pillows behind her back. She moved slowly, gingerly. Her hair was all flat from having dried by itself after the shower they’d made her have at the hospital the night before. Mom had told them about that. And about the pill Ellen had to take to make sure there was no kid. Shelley wanted to run.

Instead she sat. Stared. Didn’t know what to say. She was afraid she’d do something really stupid, like cry.

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